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Muffin cases

I think a muffin has to be one of my favourite cakes. Whenever I go into Costa coffee with my little girl we always share one of their white chocolate and raspberry muffins and if we pass a Costa and don't go in she gets rather upset, as do I if I'm being honest, there's nothing nicer than coffee and a muffin as a treat.

Every Wednesday I meet up with my mummy friends and their babies. We alternate each others houses and so every couple of weeks it is my turn. There is one girl who puts us all to shame by baking fresh cakes for us when she entertains at her house and we're not just talking a few fairy cakes, we're talking about pavlovas, Victoria sponges properly decorated and so on. She's pretty much like Bree from Desperate Housewives and I decided a few months ago that I needed to up my game and offer more than a box of Mr Kiplings finest. I got a muffin cookbook from my best friend for Christmas which includes both sweet and savoury muffins so I have started to get into baking these.

Now one of the vital ingredients you need while baking muffins is muffin paper cases. These paper cases from Waitrose are great. They are from the Waitrose own range which I always find is a little bit cheaper than other brands but I have to say I don't really know if there is a muffin case "brand", anyway, this I find are quite cheap at £1.30 for a pack of 75 cases. This works out to just 1.7p each per case according to the packaging so you can afford to burn a few muffins if this is the case.

The muffin cases are made of a thick paper and are plain white. You can buy muffin cases with different patterns and designs on them but I like these plain ones as they let your muffin do the talking and will go with any theme you are trying to achieve with the taste and flavour of your muffin as well as any toppings you decide to put on the top. Muffin cases are always a bit bigger than fairy cake cases which I like as this allows you to bake a really big muffin. I also find that the cases are taller as well so they fit into a muffin pan well for cooking and then the muffin mixture inside is allowed to rise well in the case and create that lovely "muffin top" of the cake.

The cases cook well and protect the muffin inside and I find always make the top of my muffins nice and crunchy. The Muffin pulls away nicely from the paper case and they do not tear like thinner cases you can buy do. What I really like about them is that they all come in a plastic case with a plastic lid on the top so this makes them really easy to store when you need to use them again.